General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Starbucks arrests: Who gets to decide whether youre a patron or a trespasser? [View all]hunter
(38,311 posts)The community I grew up in was 99% white and kept that way by police who harassed anyone who wasn't white, and shop keepers, real estate agents, loan officers, etc.., who gave a cold shoulder to anyone who wasn't white.
Such behavior was outlawed by the the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but only visible by statistics and the experiences of non-white people.
You don't have to go to far back in time to sundown towns, places where any black person picked up after sunset was either jailed for bogus "trespassing" charges or beaten up and dumped outside town borders.
It irritates the hell out of me to see supposed democrats letting police off the hook for their bad behavior. The police are not magic fairies of justice who can be called out of the sky to solve any civil dispute, or to act as cheap bouncers for racist shop managers.